Government ‘rides the waves of change’ with eGov2015

eGov2015 was developed with inputs from the people, private and public sectors and will guide public agencies in the implementation of new ICT programmes over the next five years.

According to a release, Singapore has launched its next e-Government masterplan, which is aimed at achieving the vision of a collaborative government that co-creates and connects with the people. eGov2015 was announced by Mr Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security, Minister in charge of the Civil Service and Minister for Home Affairs, at the eGov Global Exchange 2011 on 20 June 2011.

“In an increasingly complex and rapidly changing environment, government agencies need to ride the waves of change and continuously adapt to new trends,” said Mr Teo. “In the realm of e-Government, the rising popularity of the Internet, widespread mobile access and the rapid take-up of social media tools mean that governments will need to be more connected, more innovative and more efficient in harnessing ICT to deliver higher, more sustainable public value.”

In line with its vision, the masterplan will focus on three strategic areas:

• Co-creating for greater value
• Connecting for active participation, and
• Catalysing whole-of-government transformation

One significant development under the first thrust of co-creation is facilitating access to publicly-available government datasets for use by the private sector. By providing such platforms for co-creation, the Government hopes to encourage the private sector to tap on the vast amount of data available in the public sector to develop new value-added services.

At the same time, the Government will continue to work towards delivering a seamless and integrated web experience across all government web sites and to explore new delivery channels such as feature-rich mobile services and IPTV services. Greater personalisation is also in the pipeline, with new services such as OneInbox providing individuals with one-stop access to all government correspondences.

Under the second strategic area of connecting for active participation, the Government hopes to widen and deepen its e-engagement efforts and experiment with new ways to tap on the wisdom and resources of netizens, for example, through crowdsourcing. At the same time, the REACH portal, the Government’s official online feedback channel, will be enhanced to include news and updates on all government consultation exercises.

Mobile and social apps will also be introduced to enable citizens to receive mobile alerts and provide their feedback and suggestions. In tandem with these moves, there are also plans to enhance public officers’ capabilities in using new media tools to engage the public.

Speaking at a media briefing on eGov2015, RADM(NS) Sim Gim Guan, Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, said different platforms will be used to achieve different engagement objectives. For example, surveys may be conducted for broad sensing of sentiments on the ground, while focus groups may be a more effective mechanism for engaging particular segments of the population or specific industry sectors. “We need to look at how best to use the various platforms to achieve our desired outcomes, and how to make use of technology to enhance engagement and outreach,” he said.

The third strategic area of eGov2015 will focus on transforming the public sector infrastructure and services, the public sector workplace and the capabilities of public officers.

The government private cloud will be a key component of the next generation whole-of-government infrastructure, allowing agencies to benefit from shared, scalable and resilient cloud computing resources. Under eGov2015, there will also be efforts to spearhead government-wide adoption of innovative workplace technologies to enhance internal collaboration.

At the same time, shared tools and services will be made available to the agencies to facilitate the development of business analytics applications. This will enable them to gain strategic insights from the vast amount of data that the Government has collected over the years.

In his keynote address at eGov Global Exchange 2011, Mr Teo noted that the emergence of new infocomm technologies calls for fundamental rethinking and transformational shifts in the way Singapore looks at e-Government.

“Governments must take on the roles of a facilitator and enabler – to collaborate with the public, private and people sectors in creating new solutions, new businesses and new wealth,” he said. “I am hopeful that (the eGov2015) vision of a collaborative government that co-creates and connects with its people will deliver a new, higher level of services that people find useful and will help to improve their daily lives.”